childcare-50years

2
residential care to children where "it is not practicable or desirable
for the time being to make arrangements for boarding-out". This
preference for foster care as the most appropriate form of substitute
care reflected the thinking of the 1946 Curtis Committee Report in
England and the Children Act 1948 (England and Wales).
Accompanying the Children and Young Persons Act 1950 were several
Statutory Rules and Orders, including Children and Young Persons
(Boarding-Out) Regulations (NI) (1950) (SRO 1950 No 43). These
regulations covered the following:
• the procedures required in approving and maintaining contact
with foster homes;
• a requirement that welfare authorities should report to the
Ministry of Home Affairs if children had not been boarded-out
within 3 months of their admission to care and acquire its consent
for alternative arrangements.
In 1950, the number of children boarded-out was 472, an increase of
31 per cent from the 1937 figure. The number of children boardedout
increased dramatically following the commencement of the
Children and Young Persons Act 1950, as illustrated in Table 1.
Table 1 - The Number of Boarded out Children 1950-53
Year No. Boarding Out. % increase % of all in care
1950 472 - 67
1951 579 27 69
1952 652 13 67
1953 934 43 70
In 1956 the Northern Ireland Child Welfare Council published a report
"Children in Care" (Belfast, HMSO) which noted that of the 1,303
children in the care of welfare authorities, 891 (68 per cent) were
50 YEARS OF CHILD CARE IN NORTHERN IRELAND
19